


Ach, Du.

by bible



Category: Dark Avengers (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, I Caved, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 16:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2395769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bible/pseuds/bible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The names in media are easiest to associate with this boy, because I have never seen any <i>real person</i> quite like this boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ach, Du.

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd, I'll beta later. I'm tired.

Daken walked into the expansive home to listen to the undeniable noise of his girlfriend having an orgasm. And then, three seconds later, a complete stranger having an orgasm, quite definitely male.

He turned on his heel, with blood beading at his knuckles, little black spots peeled up that collected in the ridges of his hand, and concentrated adamantly on not killing anyone. He was very unsuccessful.

* * *

 

"Welcome to The Sweet Tooth."

It was a comforting smell. The store was aromatic with spice and richness, a kind of smell that made Daken feel much like a menstruating woman in her first few days of the cycle. The display case revealed keenly decorated chocolates, all placed meticulously and arranged artfully. So many options, it was a wonder how this small family-run eatery managed to create detailed and beautiful treats on the daily.

"Oh, it's you."

Daken turned from the case and faced the speaker. He was bent over a fountain, running a spatula under the spray and breaking up hardened chocolate to keep it flowing properly. Lester was a boy in his calculus class. He was devastatingly brilliant, if secluded. Also the best pitcher in the state, probably, outside of the Yankees. Once, a moth had flown in the rotunda. Lester threw his pencil at it, pinned it to the wall with the force of a dart embedded in a bull's-eye.

An angry boy, he kept to himself, but occasionally spoke with Robert Reynolds. Daken had not been far too interested in the guy, saw him once in a while. He wasn't easy to miss, at six-one, with the build of an intensive athlete and the face of a Nazi. There was a time when Daken tried to figure him out, just because of the seclusion, because of the mystery. Lester was not predictable like everyone else.

Daken had not taken much interest in him afterwards. He wore the work t-shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his shoulders, exposed alabaster, muscled biceps. He had a shaved head, blue eyes. Aryan boy. _You do not do, you do not do_ , thought Daken. He ran a pink-stained hand over his face and offered a smile. However hard he scrubbed his hands raw with soap and water, blood stains always took a little more.

Standing up from his haunches, Lester stretched out, set the spatula by the table. A short table, meant for children. Samples of fruit and chips and candy laid out in front of it on paper plates. Lester stared at him with a vacuity of expression, then motioned to the selection.

"What can I get for you?"

Daken studied the chalkboard, feminine cursive and broken English indicating the options and prices. He chewed on his thumbnail and decided a moment later, line of vision returning to Lester. "Mexican spiced hot chocolate, a chili bar, dark chocolate truffles."

Lester's brows rose, but his eyes did not play at an emotion other than that of a glazed working man. He picked out a couple pieces with a napkin. An Italian woman with blonde hair and black roots began preparing the hot chocolate. "Right, you want a tampon to go with that?"

"Hmm," Daken stretched, scratched at the skin over his waistline. "That obvious?"

"Sure, you look like you've had a shit day."

Daken's lips tightened. "Hmm," he repeated, irritation evident in this noise. Lester continued on despite this.

His tone softened as he said, "I know what it feels like."

"Oh, _do_ spare me," Daken bit out, moved to sit in one of the tiny tables provided. Lester placed the chocolates carefully on the plate. Daken took note of a bloodied band-aid on his wrist, which Lester determinedly kept from the food. The woman handed him the mug, and Lester uncapped one of the many containers, sprinkled red spices into the rich chocolate, drizzled a sweet-looking chili sauce over it. He did this with a seemingly characteristic, creative precision. Made it look like art, and not a clinical ordeal.

Lester moved to the table to serve him. He smelled wonderfully, of repressed anger and chocolate and ashes. When he spoke, it was a coolness that betrayed his inner intention of fury. Perhaps he was, by default, unhappy. Or perhaps Daken had struck a nerve in not caring for his ordeals. "Enjoy."

Daken stared at his order, then at Lester, and leaned over to catch his wrist.

"Sit with me."

"Uh, no."

"I'm _alone_."

"Good," Lester said, and then jerked his arm from Daken's grasp, "Maybe you'll understand the term 'independence.' Can you honestly not go five seconds without human contact before you start crying?"

Daken was left in solitude, with his chocolates, and watched Lester with growing affection, hummed a little tune as he ate. _You're an angry blade and you're brave, but you're all alone. I'll make you mine_. People were, after all, projects.

* * *

Living in the Bronx was half-and-half. Hard and easy. The Bronx was the easy part, once you established your status. Living was the difficult part.

Yellowing weeds shone under the afternoon's golden sun, coloring the dead grass a hay-colored shine. From his perspective, sprawled on his stomach in the yard, eyes turned up at the long blades, it could be mistaken for wheat. Lester sucked so hard on the cigarette between his lips that he finished it in record time, and started on his second in the next minute, savoring the ash rusting his lungs and chest best he could.

His fingers sprawled over the book.

"I know you're there. I could kill you with this cigarette."

"And why would you do that?" 

Lester held a finger up in the universal 'wait' sign, smoke between his lips. The end glowed bright orange, flaked and floated into the wide, yawning sky, and he rolled onto his back. Closed the book on his thumb. Put the cigarette out on his arm.

Daken falsified a wince. Lester caught onto that smirk. He sank beside him in the grass, looked at his book. Sweat dappled his temple. " _The Naked and the Dead_? Really." He eyed him.

"I know. I look like a Nazi," said Lester, then rolled his eyes, "Just need a carving in my head."

"Not God, but a swastika." Daken mused. Lester blinked. Daken's lips parted to explain. He did not get the chance.

"So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, the boot in the face, the brute, brute heart of a brute like you."

Daken stared at him. Lester's mouth cracked in a grin. He had straight, white teeth, that were obviously fake, discolored in shades of eggshell. Daken touched his arm. "And I imagine all the cigarette burns are from other sources? Seeing as they're in stages of healing. You weren't a smoker at ten, were you?"

"Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through." He yanked his arm away. Daken shrugged, made room so they could face each other, parallel.

"You know what it feels like, then, hm?"

Warily eyeing him, Lester jutted a thumb over his shoulder, and at his home. "If you tell me your sob-story, I'll tell you mine."

* * *

The coffee was watery and bitter, tasteless or vaguely sewage-flavored, he couldn't tell. His eyes squinted and he jerked away from the mug after the first sip. Lester's lips turned up at the corners.

He set down the offensive cup and frowned pointedly at Lester. "That was rude."

"You said 'whatever you got.'"

Daken offered a slight smirk. "I meant if it is, in fact, edible."

"What?" Lester sank in the seat across from him, drank from a chilled, sweating bottle of water, and offered it. "It's that bad?"

Daken slid the bottle towards his person and swallowed a mouthful to get the foul taste from the back of his mouth. "It's awful."

"I wouldn't know."

The assertion that feeding him toilet-water was unintentional seemed rather unlikely. Daken frowned, finished the rest of the water bottle. They didn't talk about anything serious for a long time, and Lester showed him his room, where they went through some of his books. He had a lot of non-fiction, and a lot of crime books.

When Daken asked why he had so many, Lester said, "I think a cop has to do as many things as a criminal does. Half the time spent being a cop is being a criminal. They smell the same, too. Smells like guns and oil and cigarettes. You take a whiff of the police station and a whiff of a gangster's home, and the only difference is the quantity of underlying cleaning supplies."

"Do you want to be a cop?"

"I don't think so," he said, "Haven't decided yet."

_So you want to be a criminal_ , he thought.

"What about baseball?"

Lester shook his head, "Nah. I know I'll get into the major leagues. I already have two scholarships."

"Will you accept them?"

"Probably not. I don't need to go to college. I have a government job. I don't have a choice in it. The NSA. My dad was going to get me in it. Before he died, he put my name down. They want me, because he was good at his job, and I guess they suppose that knocks back down to me, but I don't know a damn thing about security. Maybe invasion of privacy."

After that, they sat on the swinging covered bench in Lester's backyard and listened to the  _Looper_ soundtrack. Lester stopped talking at A Life In A Day, an intelligent song, one that insinuated a protagonist researching, working through algorithms, and then a rift from the earlier songs came in and Lester began to speak again. Daken could not tell you what they spoke about if he tried, but it was something simple and redundant and not entirely thought-provoking. Daken held the larger part of the discussion, because Lester would answer curtly at moments.

* * *

The calamity didn't last between them by the end of the night, and Daken thought of his threat with the cigarette. He began to believe this. But it was a good memory, that sweet day. The _morning after_ trope quite certainly lived up to its expectations.

Daken had taken the bathroom pass, moved through the hallway, and was pinned to the wall by an expensive-looking pen, sinking past his cloth and into the drywall. He didn't have to predict who it was that threaded his hand into his hair. A grin came over his face. "Hi, Lester."

The fist sank on the other side of him, and he was pinned in by weight, shoulders boxing space away. Daken was half sure he was going to kiss him. Wedging a hand between them, he ripped the pencil from his hoodie. "I do believe you were aiming for my eye."

"Are you stupid?"

"No."

"You're stupid!"

"Apparently, I am stupid. Can I help you?"

Lester pushed himself off the wall with his fist, the muscles in his left arm coiled with violent tension. He shook tremendously, and Daken was spun out of his calm if only for a moment. He couldn't tell whether Lester was about to punch him, or snap his neck. 

"What the hell have you been telling people?"

Daken slithered from his spot trapped beneath Lester. He cocked an eyebrow. "What have people been telling you?"

Lester scrubbed a hand over his face, "First of all, people are _talking_ to me. People I don't know. People who have never talked to me before. Your friends. My entire place in this school is making grades good enough for offers to get the hell out of this school. Only thing I look forward to coming here is to leave, every day. You're bringing the social aspect to me, which is the _last_ goddamn thing I wanted. Now people are asking if I'm _gay_ , if we're _dating_."

The smugness that crept onto Daken's face had Lester's fist flying at it. Daken grabbed him by the wrist and twisted it back, and got his balls crushed by a knee for his trouble.

"What -- did -- you -- do?"

Daken grinned.

* * *

He got his information from some 6'5" asshole of a kid who tended to step on people's heels for kicks.

_Kick, kick._

Stop.

_Kick_.

I will end you where you stand.

Hey, you a fag?

He snatched the phone from him. It was a picture on a social media site that he didn't even know existed. _Instagram_ , or something of it. But it was a picture of his room, his bed. Lester was asleep in it, mouth open slightly, and he was spooning Daken, arm over his chest. Daken was the one taking the picture, with his phone, Lester supposed, and the only visible part of his face was his mouth, turned up in a grin.

Lester had grabbed the phone from Asshole's hands, and threw it at the ground. It died in an expensive sounding crunch and in an array of tinkering glass splayed along the floor, clattering with a noise like a bell rung. Asshole said some asshole things, and Lester punched him in the mouth a lot until a tooth loosened. 

Daken learned of this, and knew he'd made a damn good choice.

* * *

But the memory was a lot nicer than the picture.

For New York, Lester had a country-style home. Everything inside was some kind of polished wood, with taxidermy animal heads upon the wall. Lester motioned to the deer. "It's my dad's hunt," he said, "I don't really care for harming animals. It's a sociopath's trait, though."

Implying... what? That Lester, a sociopath, had not harbored this trait? Or that he was something else entirely. Not-sociopath. A psychopath.

Anyway, the rest of the house was warm with a pale bone-colored painting and the couches were brown. Everything was particularly limited in personal items. It was clinical, like the lobby of a bank. There was one family photo that Daken lingered on.

"They don't look related to you," he said, observing Lester, then the picture. "They're darker."

"They're my foster parents."

"You're adopted?"

"Yeah. Like I said, my real dad died. Along with my mom," he lied.

"Me too."

Which was an uncanny likeliness, but hell, it was something to bond over easily. 

So they did, they sat on Lester's bed and talked about where their parents were, but Lester left out details on his past life, and so did Daken. They crafted fake stories on both of their lives, and they lied to each other, adamantly and without caution. Lester eventually became tired of the subject and announced that he'd sleep, and Daken should probably leave. 

"I don't think I want to go home," Daken mused, picking at his nails. He collected dead skin cells and rubbed them between his thumbs. Lester pushed back white, weaved sheets and lay down beneath them, the mattress creasing beneath his weight. The sun crept in from the open slots in the windows, the May light painting the room golden. Lester appeared less sickly-pale in it. When Daken blurred his eyes, spots of shimmering warmth colored the home.

There was something alien in sleeping in the middle of the day, like walking into a backwards time-zone. When they woke up, Lester explained that he had a night job, where he worked as a gas station attendant.

"How do you have time to do anything fun?" Daken asked, rolling over in their tangle of bed-lazy limbs, a nest of stale, detergent-scented blankets and worn bodies. Lester sat up and made for his closet.

"I don't really care to," he said, "I need to do something. I'm a bit of a work-a-holic."

"So," Daken propped himself up on his elbows, and counted off on his fingers, "You have two jobs, you're the lead pitcher for our school's baseball team, you take all advanced placement classes, and you manage to do all of this impeccably on three hours of sleep in the middle of the day?"

"You don't buy it for a hot second."

"Oh, no. Tell me what you really do."

But that wasn't the best part of the memory.

* * *

There was one kid in their school that made Lester feel saner. His name was Bob Reynolds.

The bench outside was made of blue-painted, plastic-y material, intertwined like a harmless chain-link fence. When Lester stood up from it, the hands he'd rested on it would often be patterned with red, curled imprints. To him, it appeared as if he was trying to break into an isolated junkyard. Bob always seemed blissfully unaware of observations like this. If Lester were to spill ketchup all over his shirt, Bob would probably look at the mess with a slow blink and relax back into the chair. 

He had a junkie's mind, the kind that saw a dreary, rainy night, and thought it'd be nice to jump off a building in that weather. He liked _blue_ weather, he said once. _Blue, like in winter. There are winters in Colorado that I know as blue, but here in New England, it's all grey and dark_.

Lester had asked if he liked camera filters a lot, and Bob smiled easily and said yes.

The two of them didn't have many friends, so they sat together and mused about a brilliant spectrum of things. Mass media, the detrimental effects of it. False pretenses. Bob didn't add much, but he liked to listen. He spoke about sports, and of base-level things. Lester didn't think of him as stupid. He certainly didn't see the world in black-and-white, but he simply didn't feel like extending on gregarious topics. He understood them, but Lester supposed he had enough complications, and mused on the easy things when he could.

Lester wondered why this was, why he couldn't (or wouldn't) speak of politics or of mindsets, or the influences young people had placed onto them and the results thereof, or of crime, but then: he'd seen the distinctive orange prescription bottles funnel out of his bag when he'd been in his own brain for too long one walk across the parking lot and tripped. He watched his bag open and spill its contents, and didn't seem too worried, but Lester walked over and helped him anyway, because no one else seemed quick to do so. The labels spit long, complicated words that treated a variety of mental illness that Bob certainly did not possess. He had no idea how he was getting them, or how it might hurt him, but Lester left him to it. Benzodiazepine was _one_ he remembered. It treated a multitude of disorders. Anxiety attacks, hallucinations, alcohol withdrawal, schizophrenia, if Lester remembered correctly.

He supposed the two of them frightened people, tall and dead-eyed. But Bob's company was relaxing. 

Lester knew that Bob was smart. He probably thought more before nine in the morning than other people thought in a month. Bob didn't seem dangerous. Lester just hoped that he was never offered power.

They sat during lunch, after Lester calmed down after his confrontation with Asshole, and with fifteen minutes left in the break, he sat beside Bob.

"Hi."

"Hey," Lester said. Bob had a lot of food on his lap. A tin-foil wrapped burger, or maybe a chicken sandwich. A bag of cut apples. Three, according to Bob. A tall drink of something chemically blue. A bag of chips, low-fat. Almonds. It all remained untouched. He opened his messenger bag and took out a couple of sheets of notebook paper, and handed them to Lester.

"What's this?"

"It's hand-written sheet music by Ella Fitzgerald."

"Shut up," Lester said, and flipped through the papers. But Bob didn't lie, because there it was: _Star shining bright above you_. In black ink, cursive, folded edges that yellowed at the ends. See? Good listener. "Where'd you get this?"

Bob stared out into the parking lot, and tied his hair up in a bun with the band around his wrist. Loose, blond strays brushed his face. "It doesn't matter."

And that was that. Lester ate his food, because Bob wouldn't. He hadn't seen Bob eat in a long time.

"Are you dating Daken?"

Lester choked on his energy drink, and Bob slapped him on the back. A blue-tinted spit wad landed on the cement, and bubbled under the sun, like a fried egg.

"No," he breathed, his chest heaving in desperate inhales as he regained his breath, palm to his chest. "Why?"

"I thought you were. There's a picture."

"Thought you didn't have any social media account," Lester cocked a brow, swallowing desperately for air. Between pants, he worked out, "That's why I like you, remember?"

Bob should have said, that's _why you like me_? Instead, he tried an apple slice, chewed it slowly and swallowed after twenty-something seconds. "Well, I haven't seen it. I actually don't know who Daken is, but someone said your name, so I listened, and I heard her say that you and him were dating."

" _Great_ ," Lester snarled.

"Are you?"

"No, Bob. I'm straight."

Bob didn't comment, but swung his legs off the bench, kicked them back and forth like a kid might on a swing. He looked childish in his glazed, fixed stare. "Know what I like? I like lakes. I think I'll go all around the world and see every lake I can."

"I don't doubt it," Lester lied, and tucked the sheet music into his folder. "You're like, my only friend, you know that?"

"Really?"

"Yeah. Thanks for the sheet music."

"You're welcome."

* * *

 

Daken Akihiro  
Sunday, October 28th  
Journal Entry

There is something very anti-hero about this boy. Patrick Bateman, or maybe even Jordan Belfort. The names in media are easiest to associate with this boy, because I have never seen any _real_ _person_ quite like this boy. Incarceration is something he evades, with lunatic certainty, and his confidence in these endeavors are certainly admirable. I hope, one day, to obtain that ability. I've known for a long time that I will never die. And in an earlier entry, I've extended on the _what ifs_? But I can't help but think, maybe you shouldn't have killed. What if someone sees? If someone knows? If someone suspects, and starts to care? My mind is in disarray at times, and so I say to myself: _you sound like a girl_. It's this way I cope, because Romulus would never sound like a girl. I evade death consistently, and yet I muse on consequences. I suppose it's "only human" of me, but that term isn't particularly applicable to me. _We are above mankind_ , Romulus said once.

Look at me. Mulling over his words, trying to be like him. I sound like a girl.

Oh, damn it. I'm writing in pen. I'd like to erase that statement. _Romulus wouldn't, Romulus didn't --_ I'm beginning to tire of these comparisons.

Anyway, this is what happened. I went to his home, and he lay in the yard. There's something about the back of his head that is very interesting. He's blond, and it's easy to pinpoint, a shiny popcorn-kernel. He lay in tall, golden grass, and he almost blended into it, one big expanse of golden shimmer, had it not been for his dark clothing. He's very natural/American in appearance, albeit Nazi-esque. (Oh! And he likes Sylvia Plath, or he at least quotes her. How quaint.)

We spoke for a long time about insignificant things, and later, we _napped_ together. Oh, yes, I coaxed myself into his bed and we... slept together! Literally slept together! He snored a little. I didn't really sleep. (Sad trumpet noise. _Wa-waaah_.) At one point, I found that he was deprived of attention, or maybe, _maybe_ I put his arm around my waist. You can't prove anything. But I knew I liked this concord. And after what happened between Leslie and I, I supposed I wanted comfort. Because I'm used to this dependence physically; I seem to always have someone on my arm. I like to assert my independence in my own mind, I admit it. But my entire power and position that I build upon is based on others' minds. And how could I be independent in that way? I wish I could say "I don't need anyone but me," but I certainly do. Who doesn't? Yeah, this boy was right.

The nap was hazy. A flotsam of sunlight kept me from falling into too deep of a sleep, but I enjoyed the rest. It was peaceful, but my mind ran despite this. I wished desperately to fall into this haze that this boy was so invested in, but I couldn't quite do it. So I played on my phone for a bit, and I felt him nose behind my ear. And a genuine quality of wonder fell upon me. I've been used to attention for years now. The women and men that I've wanted, I've gotten. There was incumbent insinuations behind all of the physical flattery they gave to me, because I demanded this. They adored me from the beginning. And this boy, unconscious and initially mordant towards me, moved to my body heat in unmistakable, unbridled, if delicate, _passion_.

For once, someone seemed to like me when I didn't make them. I was almost frenetic with glee, for one childish, low moment. What do I sound like, now? A child, I suppose, one that grew up in a broken home, desperate for sentiment and love. It was demeaning, my own reaction. I try not to brush things like that off. I try to pinpoint this and let it weigh me down so I don't make myself vulnerable ever again. So I've been letting the humiliation fester, and now I just feel silly. It was a brush against my ear, it felt good, and I enjoyed it. And so I over-analyzed it and made myself sick. It was not the only display of goodwill of the night.

He woke up after three hours, and by then I was dozing. I wasn't exactly asleep, but in a state of recumbent laziness, where my mind wandered. (I even remember my dream, something about a red king, but by then I'd pulled a red blanket over my eyes and everything was colored that hue, and it was a strange thought.) 

He led me into his garage and revealed a gorgeous Triumph. The garage overhead was blue in tone, making the motorcycle appear as it would be presented in a commercial, smack in the middle of an empty garage, clean and meticulously organized. This was obviously, his pride. Then, we got on his bike, or his father's bike, and he fastened a helmet onto me, and his own. The black screens obscured our faces, but his body language buzzed with frenetic excitement, with eagerness, and I knew he was going to show me something. There was a complexity behind the mysterious guise. I don't even know his last name, and he buzzes with extraordinary intent. There is something more behind the book-reading, and the baseball-throwing, and the murderous glares.

Murderous glare, killer smile.

Do you see where I'm going with this? I look ridiculous, grinning so wide while I write this. I should lay on my bed, on my belly, and prop my calves up, and kick them as I chat to a girlfriend of mine on a phone, inspecting my manicure. When we drove into Hell's Kitchen (yes, all the way to Hell's Kitchen, that hard-boiled wonderland of sin) the night came upon us, and the lights of the city glowed into these smeared, time-loose, ghost-like blurs, and it was truly _the_ night ride. The kind that the kids from the suburbs can only imagine and fawn over. He drove the bike like he pitched a baseball, with precision, with speed. He seemed the best at it, and we didn't talk. The low rumble of gravel shuddering beneath the wheels didn't allow for conversation. So I pressed myself to his back and felt him breathe in the way children breathed three days before their birthday. The mention made their hearts shudder, their eccentric panting escalate, and there was the voice that said: _just you wait_.

_Just you wait, Daken_.

I had not realized my own breathing matched his until I identified the moths of anxiety as, instead, butterflies of excitement. I wasn't sure what I'd see, but I was eager to learn. I did not even attempt to glean information, I let him lead me. The brake lights in front of us dappled his helmet with a red glow, same as my strange dream, and I thought of him as a king. There was this carefully condensed veneration I felt for him, which upset me very much, because hell if I couldn't twist him to my whim. Why wasn't I even attempting to do so? I thought at the time. It wasn't that I didn't _need_ to. He did not _naturally_ do what I wanted him to do. No one did. But I found myself going with what _he_ wanted. I found myself feeling that previously mentioned adoration. There was, again, this unmistakable exigency to cut it the hell out. To just go with it. I suppose my mind works at rates unreasonable for anyone to think at, but I can't help it. Again, in some sick order: consequences, results. I have no idea if it has anything to do with my origin, but any by-product of acting relatively human is diminished. And I diminish it by closing in on my instinctive feelings. Or closing on all feelings outside of this mechanical persona I put myself in. 

An internal battle. _Just_ chill _with the dude, already. No, no, don't trust anyone. Don't get too close, you're too smart. But isn't he just incredible?_

As we drove, the secondary pressure won out, I became less and less attached, and I stopped holding onto his waist so tightly. And then I loosened my grip more, and more, and then more, and Lester screamed at me over the noise of the traffic and the barriers of the helmets and the roar beneath the bike, "Dude! Don't let go! I'm going at eighty-nine, you'll fall!" So I screamed back, not as loudly, "Sorry, I just really like you and I think it's disgusting, and therefore I am going to let you go because I'm terrified of these feelings and I am not terrified of getting run over because I can't die!" 

And he said, "What'd you say?"

And I said, "I said 'sorry'!" and held onto him again.

Well, that's what I would have liked to have done. Groused at myself. Or maybe perform a lobotomy so I can stop being so uptight and anxious and just roll over and let all my worries go free and do what I wanted. Not that it'd work.

This is why I envy this boy. His mind may be a depth of things I cannot understand, but he doesn't fear consequences. He lives life to the fullest, and I think, hey, I could/should/will do that. Because _my life doesn't end_! Cue the sarcastic affirmative/optimistic noises.

Then I thought, _yes, go ahead. Shut down._

So I did this thing I do with my eyes to achieve bokeh (Which is the aesthetic quality of blurred lights. You know, when you stare into the skyline and blur your vision and the little windows and the sea and the streetlights turn into glittering dots of color? It's the thing you do to make traffic more pleasant.) and I hugged him close and stared as the city passed me, and became excited once more.

He weaved off the highway, maneuvered through the city, then into the smaller branches of it. New York is like a tree. People like the leaves, the fat, beautiful, packed part of New York. Manhattan, Times Square, Bay Ridge. The tourist attractions. Where the lights really shine. Then there's branches people go down, and they start to like it less. They dislike the rotting Ferris wheels and the desperate people, and the silver curls of cigarette smoke. They dislike the cemeteries that have no one to tend to the ground, they dislike the homes where bullet holes freeze inside door-frames, like a Pre-Rudy zone in motion. They dislike the crack-whores and the names. They dislike the anti-political street art from the eighties. They prefer SoHo, attractive white people with names like Morgan and Jordan and Saffron. (All unisex.) ~~Lest~~ This boy enjoys the gangsters, the shoot-outs, likes to be in the low-life, adrenaline pumping grounds. His bike came to a low hum as he turned into a residential area. I wanted to hold onto him now, not like before.

I should get diagnosed for bipolar disorder, but Romulus doesn't approve of psychology. He believes in the natural, animal order of things.

"What's the stratagem here?" I asked.

He turned his head, and there was something frightening about expecting a face and getting a black, curved platform. My heart beat harder, and I thought, _hey, heart palpitations! That's new_. He parked his bike in a garage, which ate ten dollars from his wallet for two hours, and then swung one leg over the bike and kept the helmet tucked under his arm. He told me that I could leave mine, so I did, and we walked through the plane of cement, strangely humid and orange in hue, and he led me out into a _mall_.

A _mall_ , I kid you not. A bastion of shopping, with tall, minority women on ice-pick heels working, and lots of ugly, fat white men shopping for leather shoes and chemical powder to cover their bald spots in an unconvincing paste.

"Why are we here?"

He laughed, a caustic sound, but did not answer. "I had plans, but I want to show you something instead. What I do when I'm not working." So he wound an arm over my shoulders and led me to one shop that had me guffaw, deep from the pit of my stomach. _Versachi_. No, no, you heard me. V-E-R-S-A-C-H-I. Not _Versace_. A knock-off suit store that the mannequins looked desperately horrified in. I was about to hit him over the head. So much for that unbridled esteem I held him in. This is where you shop? But he kept walking past the display cases, as if he belonged there, and opened the door to a back room. Inside were boxes and boxes of the knock-off, sweat-shop cloth, and, ominously, in the movie-thriller way, a single light-bulb on a string of glassy beads, suspended in the four-wall room, dull and casting that same orange light in the parking garage. It illuminated dark marks of an unidentifiable fluid splattered across the floor.

And I thought: _Well, Daken. Here's where you get raped_. Congrats.

This entry has gotten sillier and sillier. I apologize for that.

Instead, he fished inside his helmet, and withdrew a switch-blade. I rose my brows, because where was he keeping that the whole time?He plunged it into a box and the tape tore, and he opened it. I leaned forward and then recoiled. The smell was horrible, of burnt hair and old paste. A wrapped package, like a key of cocaine, was hefted into his palm. Duct tape covered it. I say _like_ a key of cocaine, because that was the impression. It was clever, but strange. If it's not a body part (spoilers!) it's drugs.

He plunged the knife into it, and out came a spill of blood, leaking like a hole in a water bottle. It splashed up and I stepped back so it would not stain my shoes. We both watched without surprise, and when I looked up at him, I realized my grin matched his own.

"Who was he?"

"Baseball player from Taylor," our rival high school, "Mocked me. At first, it was fine. Mocked me again. Again. Then he slashed my tires. In return, well... you can finish that thought for yourself."

"So you kept the body here."

"Who would guess? In this shithole of a store, in the storage cabinet..."

"Why don't you dispose of him?"

"Don't say 'him.' It's just body parts." Atrophy seemed to have begun, as the tissue shrunk indefinitely. It must have been a week old. Weeks, perhaps.

"Why don't you dispose of it?"

"Because it's fun to look at. I need proof. I develop these delusions that maybe, just maybe, I didn't kill anyone at all. Did you know I'm out of my mind?"

And this is why I envy this boy. He sees no consequences, he doesn't care for retaliation, he acts against something that he dislikes and he makes sure it doesn't happen again. He's drop dead gorgeous.

We kissed in the middle of the storage closet in _Versachi_ while he held a chunk of stomach in his right palm.

Afterwards, we went back to his place, and my mind stopped the incessant paranoia. Neither of his parents were home, and I peg that he has killed them, but I can't be too sure, and I didn't ask, because I got back in his bed and we had sex with a quiet intensity, eyes locked onto each other's, and afterwards, I said to him: "You'll probably get good at that one day."

* * *

At school, they hated each other. Avoided each other at all costs. Very deliberate steps were taken by the both of them to evade any possible meeting in the ample hallways of their school, and if it did, there was intense aversion of eye-contact. No one spoke of the picture, because they never seemed to be around each other all that much, and they spoke of each other with lilting tones when questioned. (Daken more than Lester, as Lester still frightened people. Rightfully so.)  _Who is Daken? Who is Lester? Oh yeah, that kid? I don't know him? Why are you asking me? I am upset with him? I am going to fucking kill you?_

The subject dropped, and Bob's relationship filled the empty places in his and Lester's conversations at lunch. A girl named Lindy, a very pretty girl. To him. In Lester's opinion, she was rather frumpy, but he wasn't about to vocalize that to Bob. Bob seemed potentially unstable, and he didn't want to offend him. And he liked to maintain this simple friendship. So he watched as he twined a finger around his golden hair and mused on the skinny girl who didn't mind that he did drugs, with his lips turned up, eyes on the sky.

Daken did not turn up in conversation ever again.

But otherwise, they were obsessed. In a harmful way. Lester and Daken went to The Sweet Tooth and Daken would wipe the chocolate from his hands and then lick it from his thumb and Lester flicked a fork at his jugular. Daken caught it in time, but the point was there: _Don't do that. I'll get distracted_. Distracted. A nice euphemism. 

And after games (Daken attended baseball games, it was a revelation. A very boring revelation.) the two of them would go into the locker room after everyone else left and they'd kiss in the showers and Lester let Daken's hand trail over every inch of muscle he allowed. 

Other times, Lester tried to kill him when he changed the radio station, and once he was done beating him to a bloodied pulp, he'd ask if they'd like to see a movie or invite him on a date. It was an enigmatic, destructive relationship that was under many limitations. Not abusive, because _abusive_ was not _limited_. They convinced each other that this situation was relatively normal, and even if they both knew very well that that it would never quite be healthy, they were both delusional enough to say it was okay. 

Their consummation was just that. They worked themselves over into completion, into perfection, and they nettled each other the same way they worshiped each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Look, I'm sixteen. I'm in high school. I know this shit doesn't happen. Fiction. Awesome. Leave a review? Tell me you like it or hate it. Gracias, have a good day.


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